Thursday, December 06, 2012

It's Flyday!

Since it was just fantastic outside weather-wise, I went out to the airport, accompanied by Proud Hillbilly, and we took a flight....after waiting for some other traffic to clear the runway, that is.

I guess he can go first. After all, it is his airport. And he's bigger and the tower controller like him better. (For those not in the know, it's a C-5 Galaxy transport.)

After a bit of playing around and some RC-172 spying, we flew up top Harpers Ferry for a bit.

You can see historic old town there on the left, and the train and pedestrian bridges that cross the Potomac River, the train tracks entering a tunnel and the footbridge letting out onto the C&O Canal towpath that stretches 164 miles, from Cumberland, MD to downtown Washington, DC. This point is roughly milepost 61, DC being 0.

Next, it was over Shepherdstown, and the train bridge near where I put my kayak in the other day. Now there's a train on it.

Just below the bridge, parallel to the river on the left (Maryland) side, you can make out the C&O Canal towpath through the trees.

We took a short hop over Antietam National Battlefield (hopefully she got better pictures than I did) and then it was back to the airport for a few practice landings before calling it a day.

Here's the field, looking up the remains of the old north-south runway that they had to tear up after they built the new control tower and realized that it was too close to that runway. Pity, because there are days when that runway would really be an asset.

And as a plus, here's a nice restored T-41C Mescalero that just dropped in for gas. And I got airplane envy again.

I'd have liked to look it over, but the pilot was already heading out. Darn it, because those old military Cessnas were cool. A check of his N number shows that it belongs to the Fort Meade Flying Club. Looks like they've got a nice set-up, per their website.

Then it was off for home, stopping at Five Guys for lunch since PH said she'd never been to Five Guys before. That just had to be remedied.

Now I'm back at the Lair drinking beer, doing some badly needed cleaning and trying to fend a thoroughly bored Murphy off.